Stop turning your anger inwards
Stop turning your anger inwards
Convert it into rocket fuel for your dreams
I spent a lifetime turning my anger inwards.
Hang on a minute.
Back up.
I mean I spent a lifetime, or at least half of one, not knowing I was angry at all.
I remember when one of my first therapists (yes, there have been a few) mentioned anger.
I drew a blank.
‘Anger?’ I asked, then in my early thirties, right at the start of my healing journey (I’m now 53). ‘No. Not me. I don’t have any of that. Next question.’
My response amuses me now.
Little did I know I had a lot of anger, huge vats of the stuff, bubbling around inside me, anger that I’d been storing up ever since I was a little girl, when various things had incensed me but I hadn’t had the space, or the voice, to express how I felt, or safe people around me to receive my anger and help me to process what was going on.
We all get angry.
Anger is a natural human emotion.
But if you weren’t able to express it when you were young, for fear of repercussions or reprisals, for fear you’d annoy your parents or caregivers - the big people whose job it was to provide you with food and shelter and keep you alive - you will have learned to do something else with it.
And then that behaviour, that coping mechanism or survival tool you developed to keep yourself safe, will have formed a habit.
From suppression to depression
Suppression of anger is a common coping mechanism, especially among ‘good girls’ like me.
As a kid, I fell into line and stayed silent, turning my anger and frustration inwards, taking everything out on myself.
Binge eating is a form of anger turned inwards and I began binge eating - on sugar, carbs and anything else I could get my hands on - in my teens and continued to do so into my 30s.
Binge drinking is another form of anger turned inwards, especially when you take it to the extremes that I did, often ending up vomiting on street corners after a heavy night on the booze.
Poisoning yourself with excess alcohol and then hurling it up - now there’s a violent, self-harming behaviour.
My anger also fuelled my over-working (that led to burnout in my mid-30s), my dysfunctional relationships (there were many) and my punishing exercise regime - pounding the pavements while breathing in the smog of Mexico City (I lived there in my 20s) or fainting in an aerobics class after too much tequila.
There are other physical ways of turning our anger on ourselves that, thankfully, I didn’t resort to and won’t mention here, but I’m sure you know what I mean.
Whatever path we choose, the result is the same: we suppress our anger. And this suppression often leads to depression.
Feel it to heal it
It was only when I managed to stop binge eating and binge drinking and let go of my other self-destructive, self-harming habits that I could get in touch with the emotions I’d been pushing back down inside.
Only then could my anger start to rise to the surface, to be felt, processed and ultimately healed.
This leads me to the first message of this post.
If you feel you don’t have any anger, as I did in my 30s, ask yourself the following questions:
a) Have you processed your anger through self-development work, therapy, journaling or other forms of healing and do you continue to do this as anger crops up in your life?
Or
b) Are you numbing your anger, turning it inwards, through addictive or self-harming behaviours as I did. These behaviours may involve excess food, drugs, alcohol, exercise, work, or harmful sex, destructive relationships and so forth?
If the former, well done. I celebrate your healing and growth. This is tough work. It takes courage.
If the latter, it’s OK. You have done the best you could with the resources you had up until this point. And if you want to do things differently from now on, you can change. You can learn to process your anger. You can feel it to heal it.
How to process your anger
The second message of this post is to offer some healthy alternatives to self-harm so that you can feel your angry emotions and process them, rather than leaving them stuck inside. (When we let angry feelings linger or stuff them down, they build up, often bursting out sideways at inopportune moments, sabotaging our lives and relationships).
Here are some ways I have found to process my anger without harming myself:
Writing, scribbling, journaling from the heart, writing a blog like this. Getting it all down on paper or on the screen. Tip: Don’t edit. Don’t censor. Just let it flow. Write a ‘No Send Letter’ (that’s a letter you don’t send!) to someone or something you’re angry with, from your past or present. Rip it up. Burn it. Eat it. Bury it in the ground.
Writing with my non-dominant hand (in my case, my left) so that I can bypass the intellect and give my frustrated or wounded or scared or angry inner child the voice that she so deserves but was deprived of when she was small.
Moving my body. For example, swimming ferociously, punching and kicking the water. Angry dancing, letting my arms and legs slice through the air. Pillow therapy - punching something soft. Shaking, like animals shake off their stress.
Expressing my anger out loud. For example, shouting (try this in the sea early in the morning or drive your car into a field or simply shut the windows tight and yell at the top of your lungs).
Sharing my anger with trusted friends, a coach or a therapist - anyone who won’t shut me down or shame me or tell me I don’t have a right to feel this way.
Delving deeper to discover if anything lies beneath my anger. I often find grief down there, sadness and pain.
Converting my anger into fuel to propel me towards my dreams.
If that last point sounds good, read on.
Fuelling your dreams
My experience is that anger, when harnessed effectively, can drive the most incredible achievements, helping us to break through the fear, the procrastination, the self-doubt and the ‘what ifs’ that often scupper our chances of fulfilling our dreams.
I wrote my first book, How to Fall in Love, following an outburst of rage.
I had been writing professionally for nearly 20 years. I’d worked as a journalist for Bloomberg and Reuters. I’d been published in some of our leading newspapers and magazines, from the Guardian to The Sunday Times to The Daily Mail and Psychologies. I’d had offers from five agents for a non-fiction book and tonnes of praise from publishers (although no offers of publication). I’d written reams of posts on my blog, From Forty With Love.
I’d spent years reviewing other people’s business and self-help books - books that ranged from excellent to mediocre, but that had one thing in common: they’d all been published. The authors had got their words out there.
So there I was, in my mid-40s, an accomplished wordsmith. I’d done my 10,000 hours and was, therefore, an expert at my craft (according to Malcolm Gladwell’s popular theory).
On top of that, I had so much to say, on so many topics.
Yet I hadn’t published a book.
So, I got angry.
Powering through procrastination
And I did something about it.
Fuelled by my anger and my determination to get a book out there, I powered through my procrastination, my perfectionism, my fear and my self-doubt, I cleared my diary and I united the disparate elements of my scattered mind in the service of one singular aim: to become an author.
It worked.
I wrote How to Fall in Love in five weeks and sent the e-book shooting off into the ether via Amazon. A few weeks later, I published the paperback.
Now, here I am again, launching my Substack journey with a succession of speedily written posts after getting in touch with my anger, grief and sadness about all the ways I’ve let myself down over the years - all the times I’ve failed to have a voice, struggled to stand up for myself, stayed silent about my needs and wants, worried myself silly about what other people think, under-valued myself and allowed fear to knock me off course.
I’ve been lurking around Substack for months, mulling over joining you, but as usual, perfectionism, procrastination, confusion, control and self-doubt kept me stuck in indecision, wanting to do something but doing nothing, too scared of criticism, judgement and mockery, despite being an accomplished writer with a journalism career, a book and more than a decade of blogs under my belt.
My anger cut through all that noise.
My anger silenced the internal chatter.
My anger put a rocket launcher beneath my dreams.
Over to you
Now it’s over to you, dear Reader.
What dreams are you harbouring?
What goal are you stuck on?
In what area of your life are you struggling to move forwards, hampered by fear or self-doubt?
And is there something that you are angry about?
Are you angry about not turning this dream of yours into reality, while others accomplish things you’ve always wanted to do?
Are you angry about what happened to you as a child that made you the way you are?
Are you angry with the way in which you’ve let others treat you?
Whatever the source of your anger, I ask that you don’t turn it inwards.
I ask that you don’t beat yourself up or drink yourself stupid or eat until your stomach hurts.
I ask that you don’t pound the pavements until your joints ache (movement and exercise are great but not the self-punishing kind).
I ask that you don’t act out in other self-harming ways.
Rather, I ask that you find a way to convert it into rocket fuel for your dreams.
I ask that you do this for yourself and for all those who’ll follow on behind, inspired by your courage, your determination and the fire in your heart.
If you’d like to share your dreams or your sources of anger with me in the comments below, it would be wonderful to hear from you.